What of all this?  The ci-devant Emily was no more than a summary of the feelings, interests, and passions of millions, living and dying in a narrow circle erected by her own vanities, and embellished by her own contracted notions of what is the end and aim of human existence, and within a sphere that she fancied respectable and refined.

As for the race of the Clawbonnys, all the elderly members of this extensive family lived and died in my service; or, it might be better to say, I lived in theirs.  Venus saw several repetitions of her own charms in the offspring of Neb and Chloe, though she pertinaciously insisted to the last, that Cupid, as a step-husband, had no legitimate connection with any of the glistening, thick-lipped, chubby set.  But, even closer family ties than those which bound my slaves to me, are broken by the pressure of human institutions.  The conscript fathers of New York had long before determined that domestic slavery should not continue within their borders; and, one by one, these younger dependants dropped off, to seek their fortunes in town, or in other portions of the State; until few were left beside Neb, his consort, and their immediate descendants.  Some of these last still cling to me; the parents having instilled into the children, in virtue of their example and daily discourse, feelings that set at naught the innovations of a changeable state of society.  With them, Clawbonny is still Clawbonny; and I and mine remain a race apart in their perception of things.  I gave Neb and Chloe their freedom-papers, the day the faithful couple were married, and at once relieved their posterity from the servitude of eight-and-twenty, and five-and-twenty years, according to sex, that might otherwise have hung over all their elder children, until the law, by a general sweep, manumitted everybody.  These papers Neb put in the bottom of his tobacco-box, not wishing to do any discredit to a gift from me; and there I accidentally saw them, in rags, seventeen years later, not having been opened, or seen by a soul, as I firmly believe, in all that time.  It is true, the subsequent legislation of the State rendered all this of no moment; but the procedure showed the character and disposition of the man, demonstrating his resolution to stick by me to the last.  He has had no intention to free me, whatever may have been my plans for himself and his race.

I never had more than one conversation with either Neb or his wife, on the subject of wages, and then I discovered how tender a thing it was, with the fellow, to place him on a level with the other hired people of my farm and household.

“I won’er what I done, Masser Mile, dat you want to pay me wages, like a hired man!” said Neb, half-disposed to resent, and half-disposed to grieve at the proposal.  “I was born in de family, and it seem to me dat quite enough; but, if dat isn’t enough, I went to sea wid you, Masser Mile, de fuss day you go, and I go ebbery time since.”